Timothy Doner

This is a list of notable people who, according to reliable sources, know six or more languages.

Africa

• Peter Turkson (1948–), Ghanaian Catholic cardinal. In addition to his native language, Fante, he speaks a number of other Ghanaian languages, as well as English, French, Italian, German, and Hebrew. He also knows Latin and Greek.
• Cyril Ramaphosa (1952–), current President of South Africa. Speaks English, Afrikaans, Venda, Tsonga, Zulu, Xhosa, Sesotho, Setswana, Northern Sotho, and Southern Ndebele.
• Dikembe Mutombo (1966–), Congolese former basketball player. Speaks English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Tshiluba, Swahili, Lingala, and two other Central African languages.
• Alick Macheso (1968–), Zimbabwean musician. Speaks Shona, English, Ndau, Chichewa, Sena, Venda, and Lingala.
• Trevor Noah (1984–), South African comedian. Speaks English, Afrikaans, Zulu, Xhosa, Tswana, Tsonga, and some German.

Americas

• Pope Francis (1936–), current leader of the Catholic Church. Born in Argentina and of Italian descent, he speaks Spanish and Italian natively. In addition, he knows Latin, and can get by in German, French, Portuguese, and English.
• Ivan Argüelles (1939–), American poet. He knows most of the Romance languages (including Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Catalan, Provençal, and Romanian) and a number of Indic languages (Hindi, Bengali, Sinhala, and Nepali), as well as Persian, German, Russian, Arabic, and some Chinese. He has also studied Latin, Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, Old Scandinavian, and Old Icelandic.
• Ziad Fazah (1954–), Liberian-born Lebanese language teacher, now living in Brazil. He is famous for claiming to speak fifty-nine languages, and for a time was listed in The Guinness Book of Records. It is unclear how many languages he can in fact speak.
• Andrew Divoff (1955–), Venezuelan actor and producer. Speaks English, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Catalan, Portuguese, and Russian. At one time he also knew Romanian, but forgot it through lack of use.
• Julie Payette (1963–), current Governor General of Canada. Speaks French and English natively, and can converse in Spanish, Italian, Russian, and German.
• Alexander Argüelles (1964–), American linguist. He speaks most of the Germanic and Romance languages (in particular, German, Dutch, Swedish, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian), as well as Russian, Korean, and Arabic, and he has a reading knowledge of many more languages, such as Persian and Old Norse.
• Alberto Lati (1978–), Mexican sports journalist. Speaks Spanish, English, Hebrew, Portuguese, German, Italian, Mandarin, Japanese, French, Greek, and Zulu with varying degrees of fluency.
• Pete Buttigieg (1982–), American politician. Speaks English, Norwegian, Spanish, French, Italian, Maltese, Arabic, and Dari with varying degrees of fluency.

Asia

• Lokesh Chandra (1927–), Indian scholar. He knows Sanskrit, Pali, Hindi, Avestan, Old Persian, Greek, Latin, French, German, English, Russian, Chinese, Tibetan, Mongolian, Japanese, and Indonesian.
• Jeong Su-il (1934–), Chinese-born North Korean spy. Speaks Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Tagalog, Malay, Arabic, Persian, Russian, French, Spanish, German, and English.
• Mickey Curtis (1938–), Japanese actor and singer. Speaks Japanese, English, German, French, Italian, and Thai.
• Bartholomew I of Constantinople (1940–), current leader of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Speaks Turkish, Modern Greek, English, German, French, and Italian. He also knows Ancient Greek and Latin.
• Malcolm Ranjith (1947–), current Archbishop of Colombo. Speaks Sinhala, English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Tamil, and Indonesian. He also knows Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.
• Rambhadracharya (1950–), Indian religious leader. Speaks English, French, Sanskrit, Hindi, Bhojpuri, Maithily, Oria, Gujrati, Punjabi, Marathi, Maghdhi, Awadhi, and Braj, as well as a number of other Indic languages.
• Péter Frankl (1953–), Hungarian mathematician, now living in Japan. Speaks eleven languages, including Hungarian, Japanese, Chinese, English, and French.
• Kamal Haasan (1954–), Indian actor. Speaks Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu, Hindi, Marathi, and English.
• Shabnam Mausi (1955–), Indian politician. Speaks twelve languages.
• Naela Chohan (1958–), Pakistani diplomat. Speaks Urdu, Punjabi, Bengali, Persian, English, French, and Spanish.
• Prakash Raj (1965–), Indian actor. Speaks Kannada, Tulu, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Hindi, and English.
• Priya Anand (1986–), Indian actress. Speaks Telugu, Tamil, Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Spanish, and English.

Europe

• Pope Benedict XVI (1927–), former leader of the Catholic Church. In addition to his native language, German, he speaks English, Italian, French, Spanish, and Latin, and can read Ancient Greek and Biblical Hebrew.
• John C. Wells (1939–), British phonetician. He studied Latin and Classical Greek at university, and speaks English, Esperanto, German, Welsh, French, Spanish, Italian, and Modern Greek with varying degrees of fluency. He also has some knowledge of Polish, Russian, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and Japanese.
• Queen Silvia of Sweden (1943–), spouse of King Carl XVI Gustaf. The daughter of a German father and a Brazilian mother, she speaks German and Portuguese natively. She also knows Spanish, French, English, and Swedish, and has some knowledge of Swedish sign language.
• Levon Ter-Petrosyan (1945–), former President of Armenia. He speaks Armenian, Russian, French, English, German, Arabic, and Assyrian. He also knows a number of ancient languages.
• Ranga Yogeshwar (1959–), Luxembourgish physicist and science journalist. Speaks Luxembourgish, German, English, French, Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, and Malayalam.
• Johan Vandewalle (1960–), Belgian linguist. In 1987, at the age of twenty-six, he won the Polyglot of Flanders/Babel Prize, after demonstrating communicative competence in nineteen languages (Arabic, Azerbaijani, Bashkir, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Kyrgyz, Persian, Russian, Swahili, Tajik, Tatar, Turkish, Turkmen, Tuvan, Uyghur, and Uzbek).
• Frans Timmermans (1961–), Dutch politician. Speaks Dutch, English, German, French, Italian, and Russian.
• Sigrid Kaag (1961–), Dutch politician. Speaks Dutch, English, German, French, Spanish, and Arabic.
• José Mourinho (1963–), Portuguese football manager. Speaks Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, Catalan, and English.
• Ioannis Ikonomou (1964–), translator at the European Commission. He speaks thirty-two modern languages, including twenty-one of the twenty-four official languages of the European Union (the three exceptions being Estonian, Maltese, and Irish). Among the other languages that he speaks are Russian, Bengali, Persian, Turkish, Arabic, Hebrew, Amharic, and Mandarin. He has also studied a number of ancient languages, such as Old Church Slavoniic, Classical Armenian, Sanskrit, Sogdian, and Assyro-Babylonian.
• Connie Nielsen (1965–), Danish actress. Speaks Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, English, German, French, Italian, and some Spanish.
• Mišo Juzmeski (1966–), Macedonian writer. Speaks Macedonian, Bulgarian, Serbian, English, Dutch, German, French, Italian, and Spanish.
• Anatoly Moskvin (1966–), Russian linguist, arrested in 2011 after twenty-six mummified bodies were discovered in his home. He has studied thirteen languages.
• Mikheil Saakashvili (1967–), former President of Georgia. Speaks Georgian, Russian, Ukrainian, English, and French, and has some command of Spanish and Ossetian.
• Gianni Infantino (1970–), current President of FIFA. Born in Switzerland to Italian parents, he speaks Italian, French, and Swiss German natively. He also knows English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Arabic.
• Željko Joksimović (1972–), Serbian singer-songwriter. Speaks Serbian, Russian, Polish, Greek, English, and French.
• Clarence Seedorf (1976–), Dutch former footballer. Speaks Dutch, English, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Surinamese.
• Richard Simcott (1977–), British language consultant. He speaks sixteen languages (English, French, Spanish, Welsh, German, Macedonian, Swedish, Italian, Serbian/Bosnian/Croatian, Portuguese, Czech, Catalan, Russian, Dutch, Romanian, and Albanian) and can use around thirty languages in total to some degree.
• Zdeno Chára (1977–), Slovak ice hockey player. Speaks Slovak, Czech, Polish, Russian, Swedish, German, and English.
• Daniel Tammet (1979–), British author. In his book Born on a Blue Day, he states that he knows ten languages: English, Finnish, French, German, Lithuanian, Esperanto, Spanish, Romanian, Icelandic, and Welsh.
• Ivan Rakitić (1988–), Croatian footballer. Speaks Croatian, English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish.
• Henrikh Mkhitaryan (1989–), Armenian footballer. Speaks Armenian, Russian, English, German, French, and Portuguese.
• Miralem Pjanić (1990–), Bosnian footballer. Speaks Bosnian, Luxembourgish, German, English, French, and Italian.
• Romelu Lukaku (1993–), Belgian footballer. Speaks Dutch, English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Lingala.

Oceania

• Ghil'ad Zuckermann (1971–), Israeli linguist, now living in Australia. He can speak eleven languages, and has some knowledge of eleven more.

Antiquity and Middle Ages

• Mithridates VI of Pontus (134–63 BC) could supposedly speak the languages of all twenty-two nations within his kingdom.
• Cleopatra VII (69–30 BC), the last ruling Pharaoh of Ancient Egypt, could, according to the Roman biographer Plutarch, speak nine languages and was the only member of her dynasty who could speak Egyptian as well as her native Greek.
• al-Farabi (872–950/951), a Persian polymath who mastered many languages.
• Frederick of Sicily (1194–1250), Holy Roman Emperor, spoke Latin, Sicilian, Middle High German, Langues d'oïl, Greek and Arabic.

Modern age, pre-18th century

• Thotagamuwe Sri Rahula Thera (1408–1491) was a Buddhist monk and an eminent scholar who lived in the fifteenth century in Sri Lanka. He was a polyglot who was given the title"Shad Bhasha Parameshwara" due to his mastery in six oriental languages which prevailed in the Indian subcontinent.
• Elizabeth I of England (1533–1603) could speak eleven languages: English, French, Spanish, Italian, Flemish (Dutch), Greek, Latin, Welsh, Cornish, Scottish and Irish. The Venetian Ambassador Giovanni Carlo Scaramelli once said that she "possessed [these] languages so thoroughly that each appeared to be her native tongue".
• Johannes Matthiae Gothus (1592–1670)
• Athanasius Kircher (1601?–1680), a German Jesuit polymath and scholar, claimed knowledge of twelve languages; among them: Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Coptic, as well as several modern languages. He also pioneered the study of Egyptian hieroglyphs and Classical Chinese characters.
• John Milton (1608–1674), an English poet who is famous for the epic work Paradise Lost, could speak English, Latin, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Spanish, Aramaic, Syriac, and Old English. Milton coined 630 terms in the English language.
• Wojciech Bobowski or Ali Ufki (1610–1675), a Polish musician based in the Ottoman Empire who mastered sixteen languages.
• Gavril Stefanović Venclović (1670–1749) was a Serbian priest, writer, poet, orator, philosopher, polyglot, and illuminator.

18th century

• Adam František Kollár (1718–1783), a Slovak writer, spoke Slovak, Czech, Serbian, Polish, Rusin, Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Slovenian, Croatian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, German, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Turkish, Chinese, Persian, Arabic, Italian, Spanish, Romanian, French, Dutch, and English.
• Maria Gaetana Agnesi (1718–1799) was an Italian mathematician, philosopher, theologian and humanitarian. Agnesi was known as "the seven-language orator" already in her childhood, since she was fluent with Italian, French, Greek, Hebrew, Spanish, German and Latin.
• Zaharije Orfelin (1726–1785) was a Serbian writer, artist, and polyglot who spoke more than 10 languages, and understood many more.
• Jovan Rajić (1726–1801) was a Serbian writer and cleric who spoke and wrote in many languages in his time. He was born in the Habsburg Empire where one had to know German, Hungarian, Latin, Italian, Romanian, and all the Slavic languages if one wanted to achieve a standing.
• Dositej Obradović (1739–1811) was a Serbian writer. Obradović spoke and wrote in German, French, Italian, English, Greek, Albanian, Latin, Turkish, Hungarian, Romanian and all of the Slavic languages, including Russian and Church Slavonic.
• Sir William Jones (1746–1794), an Anglo-Welsh philologist known for founding comparative linguistics through proposing the existence of a relationship between European and Indian languages (the Indo-European Languages). Alongside his native English and Welsh languages, he learned Greek, Latin, Persian, Arabic, Hebrew and the basics of Chinese writing at an early age. In all, Jones could speak forty-one languages (at least thirteen fluently).
• Noah Webster (1758–1843), a lexicographer, English spelling reformer, and author, mastered twenty-three languages.
• Giuseppe Caspar Mezzofanti (1774–1849), an Italian Cardinal, knew the following thirty-nine languages, speaking many fluently and teaching some: Biblical Hebrew, Rabbinical Hebrew, Arabic, Coptic, Ancient Armenian, Modern Armenian, Persian, Turkish, Albanian, Maltese, Ancient Greek, Modern Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Swedish, Danish, Dutch, English, Illyrian, Russian, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Chinese, Syriac, Ge'ez, Hindustani, Amharic, Gujarati, Basque, Romanian, and Algonquin.
• Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855), a German mathematician and physicist who made significant contributions to many fields in mathematics and sciences, excelled in ancient Greek and Latin at school. Entering university, Gauss considered studying philology. He wrote the Disquisitiones Arithmeticae, a groundbreaking work in the field of number theory, in Latin when he was 21. Gauss was known for his language capabilities; he spoke and wrote most of the principal European languages, many others he could read. At the age of 62 he started learning Russian and in less than two years wrote and spoke it.
• Sándor Kőrösi Csoma (1784–1842), a Hungarian philologist and Orientalist, author of the first Tibetan-English dictionary and grammar book, was literate in at least eighteen languages, including Latin, ancient Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, French, German, English, Russian, Slavic, Turkish, Persian, Hindustani, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Bengali, Pashto, Marathi, and probably also Romanian, apart from his native Hungarian.
• Jean-François Champollion (1790–1832), a French classical scholar, philologist, and orientalist, was the first to decipher the inscription on the Rosetta Stone, an achievement that facilitated the translation of the Egyptian Hieroglyphs—the titles "Father of Egyptology" and "the founder of scientific Egyptology" have since been bestowed upon Champollion. He specialized in Oriental languages while he was a student at the College de France between 1807 and 1809, and his linguistic repertoire eventually consisted of Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Pahlavi, Arabic, Persian, Coptic, Ethiopic, Zend, and his native French.
• John Bowring (1792–1872), an English political economist, traveler, writer, and the fourth governor of Hong Kong. Reputed to have known over two hundred languages, and to have had varying speaking ability in one hundred.
• Matija Čop (1797–1835) was a Slovenian polymath and linguist, and was said to speak nineteen languages, among which were his native Slovene, Latin, ancient Greek, German, English, French, Italian, Serbian, Polish, Ukrainian, Czech, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, Hungarian, Occitan and Hebrew.
• Helmuth von Moltke the Elder (1800–1891) was a brilliant strategist and tactician who had a decisive share in the success of the Kingdom of Prussia in the German Unification Wars, adapting the army to modern times. He achieved this by separating the army on the march and concentrating it at the decisive moment, Getrennt marschieren – vereint schlagen (March separately, strike together), and giving subordinates independence in how to accomplish their goals, Auftragstaktik (Mission-type tactics). He was taciturn, popular called der große Schweiger (the great silent one), although he had an excellent knowledge of languages. It was quipped that he was 'silent in seven languages'.Moltke spoke and wrote German, Danish, French, English, Italian and Turkish.

19th century

• William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1865), Irish mathematician. According to his uncle, by age ten he had mastered: Latin, Ancient Greek, Italian, French, Hebrew, Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit, Chaldee, Syriac, Hindi, Malay, Marathi, Bengali, and others.
• Jan Prosper Witkiewicz (known as: Yan Vitkevich) (1808–1839) a Polish orientalist, explorer and diplomat in the Russian service, agent of Russia at Kabul just before the First Anglo-Afghan War a part of the Great Game. He knew 19 languages i.e.: Polish, Russian, French, German and English. In exile he learned Persian, Pashto and several Turkic languages, memorized the Qur'an in Arabic.
• Solomon Caesar Malan, (1812–94), British divine and orientalist who was "acquainted with seventy" languages, according to the English classical scholar E. H. Blakeney.
• Herschell Filipowski (1816–1872), Hebraist, editor, and actuary; spoke Polish, Russian, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, English, Spanish, French, German, and Chinese, in addition to his mother tongue, Yiddish.
• C. V. Runganada Sastri (1819–1881) was an Indian jurist described as 'a linguist unrivalled in India'. He was known to have mastered English, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi, Urdu and Hindi, Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, French, and German; he was additionally known to have had some proficiency in Hebrew.
• Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), a German-English industrialist, social scientist, and cofounder of Marxist theory alongside Karl Marx, mastered over twenty languages.
• Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) was a British explorer, geographer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, linguist, poet, fencer, and diplomat; his extraordinary knowledge of languages and cultures amounted to having "mastered at least twenty-five languages—or forty, if distinct dialects are counted."
• Heinrich Schliemann (1822–1890) was a German businessman and a pioneer of field archaeology. He was an advocate of the historical reality of places mentioned in the works of Homer. Schliemann was an archaeological excavator of Hissarlik, now presumed to be the site of Troy, along with the Mycenaean sites Mycenae and Tiryns. Mastered over fifteen languages.
• Pedro II, Emperor of Brazil (1825–1891) had a deep interest in many different arts and sciences. His passion for linguistics prompted lifelong studies of new languages, and he was able to speak and write not only his native Portuguese but also Latin, French, German, English, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Sanskrit, Chinese, Occitan and Tupi.
• Vaso Pasha (1825–1892) also known as Pashko Vasa, Wasa Pasha or Vaso Pashë Shkodrani, was an Albanian writer, poet and publicist. He had perfect knowledge of a number of foreign languages: Italian, French, Turkish and Greek. He also knew some English and Serbian, and in later years learned Arabic.
• Konstandin Kristoforidhi (1826–1895) was an Albanian translator and scholar. He is mostly known for having translated into Albanian the New Testament for the first time in the Gheg Albanian dialect in 1872. He knew Albanian (Tosk and Gheg dialects), Greek, Latin, Hebrew, English, Italian, Turkish, Bulgarian, Arabic, French, German.
• Georg Sauerwein (1831–1904) was a German publisher, polyglot, poet, and linguist. Sauerwein mastered about seventy-five languages, including: Latin, ancient Greek, modern Greek, Hebrew, French, Italian, Spanish, Basque, Portuguese, English, Welsh, Cornish, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx Gaelic, Dutch, Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, Sami, Finnish, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Czech, Slovak, Bulgarian, Sorbian, Serbian, Croatian, Hungarian, Romanian, Albanian, Turkish, Azerbaijani, Chuvash (a Turkic language), Tamil, Kashgar (spoken in Siberia, similar to the language of Uzbekistan), Kumyk (spoken in Siberia), Persian, Armenian, Georgian, Sanskrit, Romani, Hindustani, Ethiopian, Tigrinya (another language of Ethiopia), Coptic or ancient Egyptian, Arabic, Malagasy (the language of Madagascar), Malay, Samoan, Hawaiian, different dialects of Chinese, and Aneitum (a language spoken in the New Hebrides).
• Pétrus Ky (1837–1898), a Vietnamese scholar, was proficient in French, English, Latin, Greek, Hindi, Japanese, as well as in Chinese, Spanish, Malay, Lao, Thai and Burmese.
• James Augustus Henry Murray (1837–1915), was a Scottish lexicographer, instrumental in the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, and its primary editor from 1879 until his death. In an application letter written to the British Museum Library in November 1866, he claimed abilities in Italian, French, Catalan, Spanish, and Latin, and "in a less degree" Portuguese, Provençal, Dutch, German, Flemish, and Danish. The letter also referred to Murray's study of Celtic, Russian, Persian, Hebrew, and Syriac, among other languages and dialects.
• Yaqub Sanu (1839–1912), Egyptian journalist.
• Hagop Baronian (1843–1891), notable Armenian writer and playwright. He was fluent in 6 languages including French, Italian, Greek, Turkish, Bulgarian and his native Armenian.
• Chiragh Ali (1844–1895), an Islamic scholar who, apart from his native Urdu, mastered Persian, Arabic, English, French, Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin and Greek.
• Naim Frashëri (1846–1900) was an Albanian poet and writer. He is the author of a total of twenty-two works: four in Turkish, one in Persian, two in Greek and fifteen in Albanian. He learned Ottoman Turkish, Persian, Arabic, Ancient and Modern Greek, French, Italian.
• Sami Frashëri (1850–1904) Albanian writer during Ottoman occupation of Albania. He authored many books, dictionaries, and an encyclopedia in every language he knows. He was fluent in Albanian, Turkish, Greek, French, Italian, Arabic and Persian.
• Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) French Symbolist poet. After retiring from writing he went on ambitious language learning program while traveling around Europe and the Middle East; mastering Latin, Ancient and Modern Greek, English, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Dutch, Arabic, Hindi, Amharic, as well as developing a working knowledge of several native African languages while living in Ethiopia.
• Robert Dick Wilson (1856–1930), American Bible scholar, spoke forty-five languages including Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, as well as all the languages into which the Scriptures had been translated up to 600 CE.
• Nikola Tesla (1856–1943), Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist, best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system. Read and memorized the entirety of many books, and was capable of speaking eight languages: Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian, Czech, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, and Latin.
• Ludwig Zamenhof (1859–1917), creator of the constructed language Esperanto, spoke eleven languages besides his own: Aramaic, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Polish, Volapük, and his native Russian and Yiddish. He also had an interest in Arabic, Italian, and Lithuanian, though he never claimed fluency in those.
• José Rizal (1861–1896) was a Filipino nationalist, writer and revolutionary. He was able to speak twenty-two languages including Spanish, French, Latin, Greek, German, Portuguese, Italian, English, Dutch, and Japanese. Rizal also made translations from Arabic, Swedish, Russian, Chinese, Greek, Hebrew and Sanskrit. He translated the poetry of Schiller into his native Tagalog. In addition, he had at least some knowledge of Malay, and some other Philippine languages like Chavacano, Cebuano, Ilocano, and Subanon.
• Emil Krebs (1867–1930) was a German polyglot and sinologist. He mastered sixty-eight languages in speech and writing, and studied 120 others.
• Minakata Kumagusu (1867–1941), a Japanese author, biologist and naturalist.
• Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim (1867–1951), Finnish military leader during the Finnish Civil War and sixth president of Finland, spoke Finnish, Russian, French, German, and English, in addition to his mother tongue, Swedish.
• James Connolly (1868–1916), Irish revolutionary who spoke English, Irish, Italian, German, French and Esperanto
• Rıza Tevfik Bölükbaşı (1869–1949), a Turkish philosopher and politician, who "...was proficient in eight languages, including Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Latin, Persian, and Spanish" in addition to Hebrew, Albanian and Armenian.
• Ahatanhel Krymsky (1871–1942), a Ukrainian orientalist and linguist; was an expert in up to 34 languages.
• Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950), an Indian philosopher who, apart from his native Bengali and educational English, knew ancient Greek, Latin, French, German, Italian, Spanish and other Indian languages like Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi and Gujarati.
• Constantin Carathéodory (1873–1950), a Greek mathematician who found the first proof of the Riemann mapping theorem. His native languages were Greek and French, and he was able to speak German, English, Italian and Turkish.
• Harold Williams (1876–1928), a New Zealand journalist and linguist, spoke more than fifty-eight languages.
• Hrachia Adjarian (1876–1953), Armenian linguist. He spoke Armenian, Greek, Hebrew, French, English, German, Italian, Persian, Latin, Sanskrit, and Laz.
• Harinath De (1877–1911) could speak thirty-four languages including many eastern and western languages such as Chinese, Tibetan, Pali, Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic, English, Greek, Latin, out of which he was M.A in fourteen.
• Sir Muhammad Iqbal (1877–1938), perhaps one of the greatest poets of Urdu and Persian languages. Among his work of poetry, Asrar-e-Khudi, appeared in the Persian language in 1915, and other books of poetry include Rumuz-i-Bekhudi, Payam-i-Mashriq and Zabur-i-Ajam. Amongst these his best known Urdu works are Bang-i-Dara, Bal-i-Jibril, Zarb-i Kalim and a part of Armughan-e-Hijaz. Mohammed Iqbal was fluent in Urdu, Persian, Punjabi, Arabic, Hindi, Latin, Greek and English.
• Martin Buber (1878–1965), Austrian Jewish philosopher, who "spoke German, Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish, English, French and Italian and read, in addition to these, Spanish, Latin, Greek, Dutch and other languages".
• Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973), Austrian economist. By the age of 12, Mises spoke fluent German, Polish and French, read Latin and could understand Ukrainian.
• Subramania Bharati (1882–1921), a great Tamil poet, learnt 32 languages (29 Indian languages and 3 foreign languages) including Tamil, English, Hindi, Sanskrit and Bengali.
• Benoy Kumar Sarkar (1887–1949), an Indian social scientist, mastered many languages, and wrote in five: his native Bengali, English, German, French and Italian.
• Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969), the Vietnamese Communist leader, became fluent in French, English, Russian, Cantonese, and Mandarin, in addition to his native Vietnamese, through study and many years spent in exile.
• Mahapandit Rahul Sankrityayan (1893–1963) could speak thirty-six languages and wrote in more than six.
• William James Sidis (1898–1944), an American child prodigy who knew eight languages (Latin, Greek, German, French, Russian, Hebrew, Turkish and Armenian) at eight years old and claimed to speak about forty languages shortly before his death. He also created his own constructed language, which was called Vendergood. Although Sidis was claimed to have an IQ between 250 and 300 measured through psychological analysis, this was never confirmed.
• James Joyce (1882–1941), Irish novelist. Was fluent in English, Italian (both Standard Italian and the Trieste Dialect), French, German, Norwegian and Latin, and had conversational abilities in Irish and Greek
• Bronisław Malinowski (1884-1942) was a Polish anthropologist, known for his work in the Trobriand Islands, spoke fluently Polish, German, English, Kilivila and Italian at least.
• Andrzej Gawroński (1885–1927) was a Polish indologist, linguist and polyglot, the author of the first Polish handbook of Sanskrit, founder of Polish Oriental Society who was able to speak more than 40 languages and studied 100 others
• Agop Dilâçar (1895–1979), Turkish-Armenian linguist who was proficient in 22 languages.
• Shuddhananda Bharati (1897–1990), an Indian revolutionary turned mystic author who wrote "over 250 published works, 173 are in Tamil, fifty in English, six in French, four in Hindi and three in Telugu. Apart from these languages, he was also conversant with Sanskrit, Kannada, Malayalam and Urdu."

20th century

1900s

• Sukarno (1901–1970), the first President of Indonesia, who was able to speak Javanese, Sundanese, Balinese, Indonesian, Dutch, German, English, French, Arabic, and Japanese.
• John von Neumann (1903–1957), mathematician. While better known for his work in mathematics, Von Neumann was a polyglot; fluent in French, German, Latin, Greek, English and Yiddish, as well as his native Hungarian.
• Steven Runciman (1903–2000), historian. Able to read Latin and Greek by the age of five, he mastered many languages so that, when writing about the Middle East, he was able to rely not only on accounts in Latin and Greek and the Western vernaculars, but on Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Hebrew, Syriac, Armenian and Georgian sources as well.
• Antoun Saadeh (1904–1949) a Lebanese philosopher and figure of Syrian nationalism who was fluent in 7 languages: Arabic, English, Portuguese, French, German, Spanish and Russian.
• Nathan Leopold Jr. (1904–1971) was born to a wealthy Jewish family. He spoke his first words at four months. He reportedly had an intelligence quotient of 210, and claimed to have been able to speak twenty-seven languages by the time he was nineteen. More likely he was only fluent in nine or ten languages. He was involved in the murder of Robert "Bobby" Franks with friend Richard Loeb. He served thirty-three years in prison before receiving parole.
• S. Srikanta Sastri (1904–1974), eminent Indian Historian, Indologist, and epigraphist at the University of Mysore, was fluent in over fourteen languages, including Greek, Latin, Hittite, Sanskrit, Pali, and Prakrit.
• Syed Mujtaba Ali (1904–1974), a Bangladeshi author proficient in 15 languages.
• João Guimarães Rosa (1908–1967) was a Brazilian writer considered by many to be one of the greatest Brazilian novelists born in the 20th century and a self-taught polyglot. In a letter he claimed to speak Portuguese, German, French, English, Spanish, Italian, Esperanto, and some Russian. He also claimed to read Swedish, Dutch, Latin and Greek, but with the use of a dictionary. He also professed some understanding of German dialects, and study of Hungarian, Arabic, Sanskrit, Lithuanian, Polish, Tupi, Hebrew, Japanese, Czech, Finnish, and Danish grammar. Guimarães Rosa suggested that studying other languages helped him understand the national language of Brazil more deeply, but that he studied primarily for pleasure.
• Muhammad Hamidullah (1908–2002), an Islamic scholar, spoke several languages including Urdu, Arabic, Turkish, English, French, and German.
• Uku Masing (1909–1985), an Estonian linguist, theologian, ethnologist, and poet, claimed to know approximately sixty-five languages, and could translate twenty.
• Kató Lomb (1909–2003), a Hungarian interpreter, translator, and one of the first simultaneous interpreters in the world, was able to interpret fluently in ten languages.

1910s

• Hugh Nibley (1910–2005), an American scholar, academic and professor. Could read Arabic, Coptic, Dutch, Egyptian, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Latin, Old Norse, Russian and other languages at sight.
• Enoch Powell (1912–1998), an English politician, classical scholar, linguist, and poet. English, French, German, Italian, Urdu, Modern Greek, Classical Greek, Latin, Welsh, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Hebrew.
• Meredith Gardner (1912–2002), an American linguist and codebreaker. German, Old High German, Middle High German, Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, Lithuanian, Spanish, French, Italian, Russian, and Japanese.
• George Campbell (1912–2004), a Scottish polyglot and a linguist at the BBC, who could supposedly speak and write fluently in at least forty-four languages and had a working knowledge of perhaps twenty others.
• Aziz Ahmad (1914–1978), a Pakistani poet, short story writer, novelist, translator, historian, research scholar, Iqbal scholar and critic fluent in Urdu, English, French, German, Arabic, Persian, Italian and Turkish.
• Toshihiko Izutsu (1914–1993), a Japanese scholar of Islam proficient in 30 languages.
• Nabi Bakhsh Khan Baloch (1917–2011), a Pakistani scholar who "has written in seven languages — Sindhi, Arabic, Urdu, English, Persian, Balochi and Seraiki."
• Henryk Szeryng(1918–1988), a Polish-Mexican violinist, spoke seven languages—Spanish, Polish, German, English, French, Italian, and Portuguese—all acquired before the age of 21.
• Fazlur Rahman Malik (1919–1988), a Pakistani scholar of Islam, proficient in Urdu, Persian, Arabic, English, classical Greek, Latin, German and French.
• Omeljan Pritsak (1919–2006), professor of Turkology and linguistics and cofounder of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, was fluent in 12 languages and learned 67 in connection with his research.
• Shūichi Katō (1919–2008), a Japanese scholar who was fluent in English, French, German, Italian and Chinese.

1920s

• Ahmad Hasan Dani (1920–2009), a Pakistani intellectual, archaeologist, historian, and linguist, who mastered thirty-five languages.
• Pope John Paul II (1920–2005), could speak many languages but reportedly was only fluent in Polish, Italian, Spanish, French, German, and Latin.
• Sahabzada Yaqub Khan (1920–2016), a Pakistani diplomat and army general who could "speak, read and write somewhere between 6 and 10 languages."
• Alessandro Bausani (1921-1988), an Italian orientalist (author of one of the most important Italian translations of the Quran) who could speak more than 30 languages, including several Asian, African and Native American languages such as Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Indonesian, and Cherokee.
• P. V. Narasimha Rao (1921–2004), who served as the tenth Prime Minister of India (1991–1996), could speak 17 languages, including nine Indian languages: Telugu, Marathi, Hindi, Urdu, Oriya, Tamil, Kannada, Sanskrit and Bengali and six foreign languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Arabic, and Persian.
• Abdul Shakoor Rashad (1921–2004), Afghan scholar, who mastered a dozen of languages outside his native Pashto.
• Max Mangold (1922–2015), Swiss linguist. He spoke almost forty languages.
• Christopher Lee (1922–2015), English actor, singer, author, and World War II veteran who spoke fluent English, Italian, French, Spanish and German, and was moderately proficient in Swedish, Russian and Greek.
• Michael Ventris (1922–1956), an English linguist and architect. French, German, Swiss German, Polish, Russian, Swedish, Danish, Italian, Spanish, some Turkish, and ancient and modern Greek.
• Stephen Wurm (1922–2001) was a Hungarian-born Australian linguist. "He was a genuine rapid language learner, and before he was 40, was fluent in five of the Germanic languages, five of the Romance languages, three Slavic languages, in Arabic, Swahili, Turkish, Uzbek, Mongol, Mandarin, Tok Pisin, and Police Motu, and could get by in perhaps 30 other languages—over 50 in all."
• Hans Eberstark (1929–2001)

1930s

• George Fernandes (1930–2019), an Indian politician who was well-versed in ten languages: Konkani (mother tongue), English, Hindi, Tulu, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Malayalam and Latin.
• Thomas Joseph Odhiambo "Tom" Mboya, (1930–1969) a Kenyan trade unionist, educationist, Pan Africanist, author, and politician could speak English as well as several Kenyan languages such as KiKamba, Kikuyu and his mother tongue DhoLuo.
• P. B. Sreenivas (1930–2013), an Indian singer and poet, spoke and wrote in eight languages, including Kannada, English and Urdu.
• Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou (1930–1989), a Kurdish political activist and economist, mastered eight languages that included his mother tongue.
• Jon Elia (1931–2002), a Pakistani poet and scholar who was fluent in Urdu, English, Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit and Hebrew.
• Hassan al-Turabi (1932–2016), a Sudanese Islamist leader, was fluent in Arabic, English, French, German, and many European languages.
• Kenneth L. Hale (1934–2001) was an American professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He spoke over fifty languages, including Basque, Dutch, French, Hopi, Irish Gaelic, Japanese, Jemez, Lardil, Navajo, O'odham, Polish, Spanish, Warlpiri, and Wômpanâak.

Post-1930s

• J. Jayalalithaa (1948–2016), Indian politician and actress. She spoke Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu, Hindi, and English.
• Sergei Starostin (1953–2005), Russian linguist. He spoke Russian, Polish, English, German, and French, and could read a further thirteen Slavic languages, as well as Chinese, Japanese, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit. Through his research, he had some knowledge of a wide range of other languages.
• Shahab Ahmed (1966–2015), Pakistani scholar of Islam. He mastered around fifteen languages.